UNDERGROUND JERUSALEM.

Inangahua Times, Volume III, Issue 71, 31 January 1877, Page 2

UNDERGROUND JERUSALEM.

Mr Hepwortb Dixon writes in the Gentleman's Magazine :— "We are making out a new plan of Jerusalem— of thai Jerusalem which was seen and trodden by our Lord. We are far from having done our work as yet, but we are steadily recovering a true and vivid picture of the Holy City as it stood when lie looked down into its streets and courts from Olivet. We now know, as He knew, the great wall along the Ceclron valley, the holy of holie3 on the Temple mount, the wide dip of the Tyropseon, with the bridge, the palace, the prseiorium, the tliren towers, and the mighty walk ascending from the IJebron gate towards the Assyrian camp. In every place we see the live rock. Here we are sure, and here only we are sure. Take one example of our work. Long ago men suspected that the Cedron Valley (spoken of by the prophets as the Valley of Jehoshaphat) used to be deeper than it is now, and to be more rugged and desolate than it is now, and even to have another course than it has now. The texts of the Scripture hardly tally with the apparent bed. The fall should be xaore abrupt, the chasms darker than they look. In these soft slopes, here dotted with trees and there with graves, we fail to catch the awful features of that ravine of which the enemies of Israel are to be grathered and judged. If the prophet Joel meant the valley parting Moriah from Olivet as his place of judgment, the natural aspects of the ravine must have been greatly changed. Have they? Yes ; our spades say — yes. By sinking shafts in the soil— the waste of many buildings during many r.ges — we have found the original Oedrou bed. In ancient times this bed lay more than 8) feet nearer to the Temple wall than the present hollow. The bed sank more than 30 feet deeper than it does now. The lower courses of the wall were then exposed, and the coping-stones 07erhung a dark precipitate gorge. By drilling to the rock and clearing off the waste of centuries wo are able to see the ravine over which the Temple rose as it was seen by J el and Ezekiel. Then the New Testament speaks of the Cedron as a brook; "Jesus went forthwith his disciples over the brook Cedron." There is no brook in that hollow now, and critics have been exei'cised in finding an excuse for sucli a name as brook being given. Our spades found out the truth. When we arrived at the natural bed, we saw water flowing as of old. Water will find a level, and will always run along the lowest course. Remove the rubbish which conceals the Cedron of St. John, and you will find the brook Cedron which our Lord and His disciples crossed. In seeking for the rock surface, as the Tyrian builders had to seek in order to secure a solid platform for their structure?, we have come in many parts of Jerusalem on extremely ancient works. Here it is a length of scarged rock, there an unsus* pected wall, anon a primitive canal. In one place wo find original quarry marks on a stone ; in a second place, tinder old and broken arches, we' find still older and more bxoken arches. Now we strike on

secret tunnels; now wo drop into buried tanks. Again we enter unknown chamber?, grope through noisome passages, and crawl through the slits of ruined towers, ail trace of which had passed beyond the memory of man. This uaderground Jerusalem is at once both old and new. At intervals we pick up pot shards, bits of jugs, and broken glass. Here is a cheap domestic j »r, and here again some pottery with the monogram of an unknown king. Fragments of vase bandies were found at a great depth, among heaps of broken pottery, not far from the Temple wall. They are Phoenician works.